Friday, February 16, 2018

Those who know their rail history know that Ottawa was
once a key point along both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific main
lines. Without going over the rail rationalization that began to reshape the
city in the 1950s and late 1960s, it’s still significant to note that the city
still hosted a substaintial rail presence into the early 1990s. When CP left
Ottawa for good in the late 1990s, the city was left with just the Ottawa
Central and Via Rail as its rail carriers. It was a far cry from the city’s
rail heyday when the capital was served by three major railways.

Yep, that’s right. Three.

1949 scene along Mann Avenue, where NYC based much of its operations in Ottawa

It would be easy to forget that the city was once
served by another major railway other than CN and CP. Until the 1950s, the New
York Central operated a division that extended from northern New York State
through Cornwall up to Ottawa.

For the full history of this fascinating division, I
would suggest checking out the New
York Central Ottawa Division website. I haven’t spent much time on this
aspect of Eastern Ontario’s rail history. But it’s an interesting chapter in
this region’s rail history, mostly because so much of the story has been lost
over the years.

The NYC bridge over the St. Lawrence River in Cornwall. The bridge was destroyed to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway shipping lane

But look at some of the placenames in the city and you’ll
see the remnants of the NYC. For example, Hurdman transit station, Hawthorne
Road and Ramsayville Road all share their names with points along the old NYC
Ottawa Division. Hurdman was once a key junction for several prominent rail
lines, but it’s often overlooked that the NYC used this junction as a way to
access the old Union Station in downtown Ottawa.

Hurdman was a major junction for all of Ottawa's major railways at one point, including the NYC. This junction was scrapped and made way for a city bus transit station. The new O-Train Confederation Line aligns through Hurdman.

When you look south of the city, you may be able to
scour for traces of the old rail link in Russell, Embrun, St. Albert, Crysler,
Finch and Cornwall. The Ottawa Division, of course, crossed over the St.
Lawrence River at Cornwall, until it was abandoned in 1958, when the link
across the river was discontinued and scrapped, as construction proceeded on an
expanded St. Lawrence Seaway international shipping waterway.

Look closely in Ottawa and you might see some hints of
the old NYC system. For example, before it could reach an agreement to share a
central passenger terminal with other railways, NYC trains terminated at a
station on Mann Street at the edge of Sandy Hill. Later, when the Union Station
was completed in 1912, NYC trains finished their runs there. But in 1941, the
railway reverted back to its Mann Street station. This point was key for the
railway, as there were other facilities for the railway here to service steam
locomotives, for example.

Some of the key NYC facilities can be seen in this 1946 image near Mann Avenue

After the war peak, which brought record traffic for
many North American railways, the traffic levels of the Ottawa Division fell
sharply. Truthfully, the promise of a rail line between New York and Ottawa
never really materialized. Business interests on both sides of the borders had
dreams of tapping into the potential of this link in the late 1800s, only to
find that the riches were never really there. That was the reason why the two
groups on either side of the border joined to build this line and link Ottawa
with New York State. The Ontario side of the operation began running revenue
service in 1897-98 and began through service to and from New York by 1900 when
the link over the St. Lawrence was completed. The New York Central bought out
the line in 1904 and officially merged it into the NYC system by 1913.

Some late power on the NYC Ottawa Division, a Fairbanks Morse warhorse

The NYC had had enough by the mid-1950s. In 1954, it discontinued
passenger services. All operations were discontinued by early 1957. In the same
year, the Canadian portion of the line was sold off to CN, which scrapped most
of the line for the rails, which it used in Montreal. Small portions of the NYC were retained in Ottawa, but most of those portions were removed in 1972.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

The CSX I knew seems to be disappearing right before
my eyes. First there was the upheaval when Hunter Harrison took over and then
there was his untimely death. Say what you want about the man, he got results.
For my part, I’m not about seriously question his methods, other than to say
that I think there is an extreme lack of long-term thinking among publicly
traded companies, especially railways. There has been a lot of debate over the
fixation over quarterly number. As a former business reporter, I understand how
the game is played, but I have to wonder how much is enough? How long can you
slash, burn and defer for the sake of making a quarterly target, even if you’re
sacrificing your long-term profitability? I’m not necessarily saying this is
the case with CSX, but you look at the scale of the cutbacks the company is
considering and you wonder what will be left when the hedge funds are finished
with this company.

April 1991 - A northbound CSX mixed freight waits on the Sarnia Subdivision, just south of the St. Clair Boulevard crossing. That empty field behind the train is now a subdivision.

For me, CSX has been a lifelong fascination. The
railway’s Sarnia Subdivision passes through my hometown. For how much longer is
anyone’s guess. When I was younger, CSX operated from Sarnia all the way to
Chatham, where it interchanged with CP. At one point, the rail line went all
the way to Lake Erie, terminating in Erieau, but that was before my time. Now,
the railway switches a few refineries in Sarnia and maintains a scant presence
between the Chemical Valley and its remaining customers south. CSX only goes as
far as Sombra. South of that, the line’s service has been discontinued through
Port Lambton, Wallaceburg, rural Kent County and Chatham.

This past summer, I caught a short local returning to
Sarnia from Sombra. At the time, I wondered if that meet might be the last time
I saw the CSX passing through my hometown. I’m thinking it was.

August 2017 - Perhaps my last meet with a CSX freight near my hometown

I can remember back when the railway was much busier,
often shuttling long trains of interchange traffic between Sarnia and Chatham,
with countless autoracks, auto parts high-cube boxcars among its usual tank
cars and hoppers. In the 1980s, nearly all the GP38s were painted in the
Chessie scheme, a scheme I didn’t like at the time but have grown to
appreciate. There were even a fair number of B&O and even C&O painted
geeps plying the rails. At some point in the late 1980s, the drab silver and
grey CSX scheme popped up. By then, the writing was already on the wall. The
trains were getting shorter and less frequent. By the time I moved away for
school, the interchange traffic from Chatham was largely gone and the railway’s
customer base in the Valley was shrinking (Dow Chemical left in the mid-1990s,
Ethyl closed and a few other operations left the area afterward).

Summer 1991 - Autoracks and cabooses? This was back when CSX linked the CP in Chatham with CN in Sarnia.

Although there is optimism that small-scale industry
is on its way back to some of these old refinery sites, I don’t think the CSX
will want to wait around for an economic rebound. Its Sarnia Sub is already
disconnected from the rest of its network.

As some continue to speculate, the Ontario Southland
Railway might be a prime candidate to pick up the trackage from CSX and assume
operations. The one wild card I’ve heard is that the City of Chatham-Kent owns
the south end of the line and has been searching for an operator to resume rail
service for the mainly agricultural customer base on the south end of the line.
That process has dragged on for years with no success.

One has to wonder whether the addition of the
lucrative switching business in Sarnia would make such an acquisition more palatable
to the colourful shortline. I would love to see those old OSR F units and
vintage locomotives in my hometown.

But I think I might raise a glass to the railway of my
youth – the old Chessie System. It’s the railway that often woke me in the
middle of the night when its freight trains would announce their presence by
the two long, two short, one long horn blasts all the way through town. Even
when I was young, I always found the sound reassuring and comfortable.

The CSX was the railway that used to distract me from
my soccer games in the summer in Parkdale Park.

The CSX was the railway that produced countless summer
chases as I raced to the tracks with my bike in the hopes of snapping a few
shots.

The CSX is the railway whose old MoW cars were used
for climbing on a tiny spur Port Lambton, where I went to school. Despite the
open access to the old cars, they were never vandalized or damaged. How times
change.

Fall 1992 - These MoW cars were often parked in Port Lambton, where I attended school. I recall climbing these cars on occasion, back when a railway could leave cars parked on an unprotected spur in the middle of a town and nothing would happen to them.

You get the idea. I’m not so much mourning the
disappearance of the railway that I know as I am mourning the loss of its legacy
in parts of Canada, especially around my hometown, but also in Windsor, Essex
County, Niagara, St. Thomas and parts of Quebec. Hard to believe that this
railway once served so many areas in Eastern Canada. But there is no room for sentimental nostalgia for a publicly traded railway in 2018.

CSX brings in an interchange load into CN's Sarnia Yard in October 2016

I look at what’s become of CSX in the last year and it
seems like there’s almost no room for nostalgia with this railway. It’s a shame
because a railway with such a colourful history deserves better.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

I didn't get around to putting together a post about the best moments from 2017, although I did devote one post to the Via Rail highlights (and there were many!). So, although it's nearly February, I wanted to take a look back at some cool moments trackside from 2017. Although my time trackside was miniscule last year, I was happy to have some incredible luck this year.

The first instance of some good luck happened in May when my family made a trip to Southwestern Ontario to visit family and attend a family reunion over the Mother's Day weekend. I made my way to Wyoming and camped out at the town's tiny Via Rail station, hoping to catch a freight train on the Strathroy Subdivision.

After sitting for an hour, I was just about to return back my Dad's house in Petrolia when I saw something far off in the distance making its way west. The best part of this freight train was that it had five (count 'em) engines leading the way. This is a rare site in modern railroading, as most modern diesels are matched in pairs or trios on the head end of a freight train. This lash-up reminded me of watching trains when I was younger when four to five engines on the head end of a train wasn't all that uncommon. So, mark it down as the first time I have seen this type of locomotive line-up in many years.

Later in the summer, I was again visiting family in the Sarnia area when I caught my first train on the St. Clair River Industrial Spur near the Rokeby Line, south of Corunna. I lived near this spur when I was growing up, but I was never able to get a shot of any trains on this line. I managed to catch this rain switching near the Suncor ethanol plant. Check out the old motive power and the giant power lines. This might be my favourite shot from last year.

During the same week in late July/early August, I was able to stay at my sister's house south of Corunna. Her property backs onto the CSX Sarnia Subdivision, which is a pretty quiet line these days. I was hanging around my sister's backyard, as my daughters were enjoying an afternoon siesta when I heard a train approaching the nearby Rokeby Line. I was able to position myself near the tracks and get this shot of a short train heading back to Sarnia.

Later in August, I was in London for a family wedding when I was able to break away from the family events to get some trackside time in. I saw a number of cool things during my time at the CN London East yard and the CP Quebec Street yard. At the CP yard, I was able to watch a local doing some switching, which included my first golden rodent-clad unit.

At the London East CN yard, I saw a lot of interesting things, which you can see in this post, but the highlight was a CN container train rumbling through. I don't see these trains at all, since Ottawa had no mainline action of consequence, so it was cool to see my first container trains in years, especially from the Highbury overpass.

In October, I came across an idling mixed freight that was parked in between Wyoming and Camlachie Road. You can read about this meet here. This was a surprising meet for me, since it was the first time I have seen two cowl units on a freight train. It's always cool to come across these relatively rare units, but having two on the same train was especially cool.

And as you may have read from this recent post, I was quite happy to catch my first Goderich Exeter Railway action shots in Kitchener in November. You can read about my adventures in Kitchener in this post. For those who missed it, I caught a duo of GEXR units tying up at the Kitchener railway station, including this unit, LLPX 2236. I didn't share this photo in my original post.

There were a number of other firsts last year, but these are the ones that I feel are most significant. Last year was a year where much of my trackside time was condensed into a few jam-packed weekends. I'm hoping to get going on some photography this year. If I can check off half as many items from my to-do list as I did last year, I'll be quite happy.